1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to natural solid, laundry detergent compositions. The composition comes primarily from renewable sources, has a limited number of ingredients and has good cleaning properties.
2. Description of the Related Art
Laundry detergent compositions have progressed and created a large chemical industry devoted to developing new synthetic surfactants to achieve ever improving laundry detergent compositions for the consumer. Because of a desire to use renewable resources, natural based laundry detergent compositions are gaining increasing interest. Most of these laundry detergent compositions contain only some natural ingredients. Most of these laundry detergent compositions do not have a majority of their components made of natural ingredients. One difficulty in formulating natural based laundry detergent compositions is achieving acceptable consumer performance with a limited number of natural components compared to highly developed formulations using synthetic surfactants and other synthetic ingredients.
Typical cleaning formulations require multiple surfactants, solvents, and builder combinations to achieve adequate consumer performance. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,551,983 to Welch et al. discloses a solid detergent composition comprising a bleach-sensitive component and a hydrogen peroxide source and examples include synthetic surfactants and bleach activators. U.S. Pat. No. 5,792,738 to Baillely et al. discloses a granular silicate-built, phosphate free, laundry detergent composition comprising alkali metal percarbonate particles of mean particle diameter below 450 microns and examples include synthetic surfactants and bleach activators. U.S. Pat. No. 5,891,837 to Baillely et al. discloses a particulate laundry detergent composition and synthetic activators, bleach activators and additional builders. U.S. Pat. No. 4,806,273 to Barone et al. which discloses laundry bars that contain high weight percentage of fatty alcohol sulfate but fails to a) disclose a peroxide source or b) a low weight percentage of fatty alcohol sulfate.
Prior art compositions do not combine effective laundry detergent compositions with a minimum number of ingredients, especially with natural ingredients. Prior art laundry detergent compositions do not have at least 95% of the components of the product derived from natural sources such as plant and mineral based materials. Moreover, prior art laundry detergent compositions do not have at least 99% of the components of the product derived from natural sources such as plant and mineral based materials. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a laundry detergent compositions that overcomes the disadvantages and shortcomings associated with prior art laundry detergent compositions.